Alfapet was the original Swedish name for the popular word game Scrabble.

An edition from the 1990s. The motto Det Klassiska Korsordsspelet means "The classic crossword puzzle game"
A game of Alfapet played in Loviisa, Finland.

In 1954, the Swedish board game company Alga was granted a license by J. W. Spear & Sons to market Scrabble in Sweden. For almost four decades, Alga sold the game under the name Alfapet (wordplay on alfabet, the Swedish word for "alphabet".)[1] In the 1980s, Alga was bought by BRIO, which retained Alga as its board games division.[2]

In the early 1990s, Mattel acquired J. W. Spear & Sons and rescinded the BRIO/Alga license in order to market the game in Sweden themselves as Scrabble.[3]

However, BRIO/Alga retained the right to the name Alfapet, and quickly designed and marketed a similar word game using that name.[1]

The new Alfapet word game differs in several ways from the international game of Scrabble:[4]

  • The board has 17 x 17 squares (instead of 15 x 15).
  • There are more bonus squares (even quadruples) and also reduction squares.
  • There are 120 tiles (instead of 100) and the values differ from the Swedish Scrabble set.
  • The letter Q has a separate tile (but can only be played with a blank tile in Scrabble).
  • There are several rule differences.

See also

Sources

  1. 1 2 "Varför bytte man namn på Alfapet?", Expressen (in Swedish), 2009-11-19, retrieved 2020-02-19
  2. ↑ "Alfapet". Board Game Geek. Retrieved 2020-02-18.
  3. ↑ "Så blir du en vinnare i ordspel", Fria Tidningen (in Swedish), 2012-03-22, retrieved 2020-02-19
  4. ↑ "Hem: Välkommen!". Svenska Scrabble förbundet (in Swedish). 2019-11-05. Retrieved 2020-02-19.
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